AUGUSTA (WGME) — Maine has the oldest population in the country, and health care professionals say older Mainers deserve proper care.
Right now, inadequate funding is a major hurdle.
“There’s a $96.5 million shortfall between the amount of money that MaineCare pays for a facility to care for a patient and then the actual cost to care for the patient,” Northern Light Health Vice President of Government Relations Lisa Harvey-McPherson said.
She and others gathered at the statehouse Thursday as part of the “Who Will Care?” campaign.
They’re pushing for funding of long care facilities in the state.
Harvey-McPherson says nursing homes have responded to a cost shortfall by closing facilities, changing the services they offer or by not filling beds.
“About 30 percent of the beds are empty and they’re empty because they don’t have the funding to hire the staff,” Harvey-McPherson said.
Kristin Cyr is the vice president of nursing and patient care at Northern Light.
She says older adults can’t always get the care they need immediately when beds aren’t open.
Those patients often have to go to other facilities, some of which aren’t close by.
That’s the case in Hancock County. A lack of funding means zero long-term beds there right now for the aging population.
Many people end up at a hospital instead, which Cyr says is devastating for patients and their families.
“They belong in a residential setting, and having activities, and other coordinated efforts out of a hospital setting,” Cyr said.
Inadequate funding is causing a crisis for health care professionals too, according to Maine Medical Center Chief of Hospital Medicine Dan Meyer.
“We started to see really high rates of burnout among health care providers, and it’s a very hard time to be a nurse, a physician or other health care professional,” Meyer said.
Health care professionals say more funding could help stabilize Maine’s health care system.
“No older adult should be living in the hospital for months and months waiting for the level of care they need in the community. We can do better than that,” Harvey-McPherson said.
The group hopes funding gets added to the governor’s supplemental budget proposal.
They say they’re working with legislators to make that happen.